第一篇：收音机 Radio Automation
Today they are everywhere. Production lines controlled by computers and operated by robots. There's no chatter of asmbly workers, just the whirr and click of machines. In the mid-1940s, the workerless factory was still the stuff of science fiction. There were no computers to speak of and electronics was primitive. Yet hidden away in the English countryside was a highly automated production line called ECME, which could turn out 1500 radio receivers a day with almost no help from human hands.
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养鱼记John Sargrove, the visionary engineer who developed the technology, was way ahead of his time. For more than a decade, Sargrove had been trying to figure out how to make cheaper radios. Automating the manufacturing process would help. But radios didn't lend themlves to such methods: there were too many parts to fit together and too many wires to solder. Even a simple receiver might have 30 parate components and 80 hand-soldered connections. At every stage, things had to be tested and inspected. Making radios
required highly skilled labor-and lots of it.
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In 1944, Sargrove came up with the answer. His solution was to dispen with most of the fiddly bits by inventing a primitive chip-a slab of Bakelite with all the receiver's electrical components and connections embedded in it. This was something that could be made by machines, and he designed tho too. At the end of the war, Sargrove built an automatic production line, which he called ECME (electronic circuit-making equipment), in a small factory in Effingham, Surrey.
ECME Line垃圾分类箱
瑞士腕表C
An operator sat at one end of each ECME line, feeding in the plates. She didn't need much skill, only quick hands. From now on, everything was controlled by electronic switches and relays. First stop was the sandbluster, which roughened the surface of the p西安附近城市>妈妈感慨孩子长大短语
lastic so that molten metal would stick to it. The plates were then cleaned to remove any traces of grit. The machine automatically checked that the surface was rough enough before nding the plate to the spraying ction. There, eight nozzles rotated into position and sprayed molten zinc over both sides of the plate. Again, the nozzles only began to spray when a plate was in place. The plate whizzed on. The next stop was the milling machine, which ground away the surface layer of metal to leave the circuit and other components in the grooves and recess. Now the plate was a composite of metal and plastic. It sped on to be lacquered and have its circuits tested. By the time it emerged from the end of the line, robot hands had fitted it with sockets to attach components such as valves and loudspeakers. When ECME was working flat out, the whole process took 20 conds.
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ECME was astonishingly advanced. Electronic eyes, photocells that generated a small current when a panel arrived, triggered each step in the operation, so avoiding excessive
wear and tear on the machinery The plates were automatically tested at each stage as they moved along the conveyor. And if more than two plates in succession were duds, the machines were automatically adjusted-or If necessary halted. In a conventional factory, workers would test faulty- circuits and repair them. But Sargrove's asmbly line produced circuits so cheaply they Just threw away the faulty ones. Sargrove's circuit board was even more astonishing for the time. It predated the more familiar printed circuit, with wiring printed on aboard, yet was more sophisticated. Its built-in components made it more like a modem chip.
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When Sargrove unveiled his invention at a meeting of the British Institution of Radio Engineers in February 1947, the asmbled engineers were impresd. So was the man from The Times. ECME, he reported the following day, "produces almost without human labour, a complete radio receiving t. This new method of production can be equally well applied to television and other forms of electronic apparatus."
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The receivers had many advantages over their predecessors. Wit components they were more robust. Robots didn't make the sorts of mistakes human asmbly workers sometimes did. "Wiring mistakes just cannot happen/ wrote Sargrove. No wires also meant the radios were lighter and cheaper to ship abroad. And with no soldered wires to come unstuck, the radios were more reliable. Sargrove pointed out that the circuit boards didn't have to be flat. They could be curved, opening up the prospect of building the electronics into the cabinet of Bakelite radios.
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Sargrove was all for introducing this type of automation to other products. It could be ud to make more complex electronic equipment than radios, he argued. And even if only part of a manufacturing process were automated, the savings would be substantial. But while his invention was brilliant, his timing was bad. ECME was too advanced for its own good. It was only competitive on huge production runs becau each new job meant
retooling the machines. But disruption was frequent. Sophisticated as it was, ECME still depended on old-fashioned electromechanical relays and valves-which failed with monotonous regularity. The state of Britain's economy added to Sargrove's troubles. Production was dogged by power cuts and post-war shortages of materials. Sargrove's financial backers began to get cold feet.
